Turning music into a powerful brand asset.

Ascend

FOUNDER: Sean Knapp

FOUNDED: 2015

INNOVATION: Putting the power of big data in the hands of business people

HQ: Palo Alto

By now, every industry has woken up to the power of big data: leveraging complex, voluminous data sets to gain valuable market insights and optimize customer offerings. Ascend puts the power of big data analytics directly in the hands of business people, obviating the need to hire and manage data scientists and data engineers as intermediaries. Think Siri for big data.

Bench

FOUNDERS: Ian Crosby, Jordan Menashy, Pavel Rodionov & Adam Saint

FOUNDED: 2012

INNOVATION: Outsourced bookkeeping with intelligence

HQ: Vancouver

Bench produces monthly P&L and balance sheet reports for small businesses through a standardized, scalable process. Using technology to automate tasks and process engineering to optimize the rest, Bench has built a streamlined factory for financial statements that produces great quality at low cost. Combined with a beautiful user interface and complemented by an in-house full-service accounting team, Bench is a new kind of book keeper that raises the bar for the accounting industry.

Feed.fm

FOUNDERS: Jeff Yasuda, Eric Lambrecht & Lauren Pufpaf

FOUNDED: 2012

INNOVATION: Digital Music Marketing

HQ: San Francisco

Feed was founded by music lovers who know that music delivers authentic connections and who are committed to leveraging music in a fundamentally new way for business results. Feed.fm works with leading brands to deliver uniquely curated media experiences that drive commerce and boost brand engagement. The Feed plug and play media solutions have helped clients double their app user retention rates and drive 2X visit-to-purchase conversions.

Kueski

FOUNDER: Adalberto Flores Ochoa

FOUNDED: 2013

INNOVATION: First online-only lender in Mexico

HQ: Guadalajara

Kueski is the largest online-only payday lender in Mexico. Users apply for a small loan on-line, specifying how much money they need and when they would like to pay it back. Kueski’s machine learning risk engine assesses a loan application within seconds. Upon approval, a wire transfer is made instantaneously. In a market where 85% of citizens don’t have access to credit, Kueski is enabling a individuals, families and small businesses to leverage short-term loans.

Liftoff

Liftoff is a full-service mobile app marketing and retargeting platform that uses post-install data to run true CPA-optimized user acquisition and retention campaigns. With Liftoff, campaigns are optimized to drive actions beyond the install, like booking a hotel, subscribing to a service, or making a purchase. Liftoff placed 2nd in engagement in front of Facebook and Twitter and just behind Google adwords.

Other Machine Company

FOUNDERS : Danielle Applestone, Saul Griffith & Michael Stochosky

FOUNDED: 2013

INNOVATION: Democratizing digital manufacturing

HQ: San Francisco

EXITED: Bantam Tools, 2017

Other Machine Company (OMC) is at the forefront of the digital desktop manufacturing movement: the future is small-batch, ultra-customized, and on-demand. Like at HP and Apple, OMC transforms industrial tools into consumer products and aims to put them in every home and business. OMC is full-stack, with an ecosystem of computer-controlled hardware, software, marketplace, and community that enables everyday people to directly harness the power of modern manufacturing.

Prevoty

FOUNDERS: Julien Bellanger & Kunal Anand

FOUNDED: 2013

INNOVATION: Next generation Web app security

HQ: Los Angeles

Prevoty, a next generation web application security provider, is pioneering a new approach to securing web applications. Prevoty eliminates the top OWASP threats by validating inputs, queries and tokens. Prevoty’s proprietary technology reduces the time and cost to develop secure applications by embedding security libraries and plugins. Top technology, media, retail and financial organizations use Prevoty for its technical efficacy, ease of use and flexibility. Prevoty protects over half a billion unique users.

Sourcery

FOUNDERS: Na’ama Moran & Peretz Partensky

FOUNDED: 2012

INNOVATION: Bringing internet efficiencies to the professional food supply chain

HQ: San Francisco

Sourcery is bringing internet efficiencies to ordering and accounts payables for wholesale food buyers and suppliers. Currently, most of the transactions in the $220B byzantine foodservice industry are handled by phone calls, fax machines and paper invoices. Sourcery is creating the web standard for data and transactions in the food supply chain. By bringing transparency and efficiency to this market, Sourcery is democratizing access to high-quality foods and organizing a gold mine of data in the process.

Vidora

FOUNDERS: Abhik Majumdar, Alex Holub & Phil West

FOUNDED: 2012

INNOVATION: Digital content customized by AI

HQ: San Francisco

Vidora was founded with the belief that interactions between humans and computers can and should evolve using the power of artificial intelligence. The Vidora platform enables any company to dynamically adapt website and app layouts, menus, text, and content uniquely to each individual without requiring any engineering work. Founders are engineers, PhDs, and experts in human­computer interactions from Stanford, Berkeley, and Caltech. The technology helps media and commerce companies like Yahoo!, News Corp, and Panasonic increase engagement and revenue.

Remot3.it

FOUNDERS: Ryo Koyama, Mike Johnson & Doug Olkein

FOUNDED: 2008

INNOVATION: Securing IoT devices

HQ: Palo Alto

Remot3.it cloud services connects industrial IoT device users to remot3.it enabled devices from anywhere on internet, reducing the expense and hassle of infield provisioning and maintenance. Patented Remot3.it technology allows any internet service or device to become privately and securely accessible from the internet, even behind firewalls or over mobile carrier networks.

VORSTELLA

FOUNDER: Matt Stump and Avinash Mandava

FOUNDED: 2017

INNOVATION: Automated cloud migration and ML-powered optimization

HQ: San Francisco

Major corporations are finally breaking away from hosting mission critical databases and monolithic applications in their own data centers and migrating to the cloud and service based applications. VORSTELLA automatically sets up cloud applications and operates them for customers, then uses machine learning on system-wide data to continually tune and optimize performance better than human experts can.

Wizeline

FOUNDER: Bismarck Lepe

FOUNDED: 2013

INNOVATION: Revolutionizing product development

HQ: San Francisco

Wizeline transforms how business build technology products. Through advanced analytics that leverage engagement data, the SaaS intelligent platform enables business to focus their product strategy on the opportunities with the highest return and accelerate their time to market. Our goal is for all companies to one day use Wizeline to decide which products to build and market.

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If you want to contact us

We place a high priority on meeting with start-ups that are referred by someone we know. If you aren’t already connected to our network, feel free to send us an email. Forgive us in advance for only responding to cold introductions that are absolutely fascinating.